A lot of hot air?

Skeptics unsure it's a real problem

From Correspondent Candy Crowley

(CNN) -- Valentina Denisova, a Russian, shovels snow for a living. Is she a believer? Nyet.

"I don't see any real global warming," she says. "I haven't noticed any real changes in the temperature."

Nor are there many converts along the Florida coast in the United States. There have been predictions that global warming would mean rising seas that would cover large portions of the Florida coast.

But Hector Castro, who sells real estate in South Florida, says he hasn't seen any signs that home buyers are concerned about coming home and finding their homes underwater.

"All they want is to come here and enjoy their life and be in the best place in the world, probably," Castro says. "And if they are on the waterfront, the happier they are."

The threat of global warming is a front-burner political issue, but it has not yet caught fire in the streets.

"I cannot say anything," a woman in Berlin says. "I know nothing about this."

Only 24 percent of Americans are worried

A CNN-USA Today Gallup poll found that in 1989, 35 percent of Americans worried a great deal about global warming. Eight years later, only 24 percent were concerned.

"I don't know," a San Franciscan says. "It's hard to say whether it's something that actually exists or not."

Not all the skepticism is on the streets, either. There are scientists who question the supposed link between what people have done and what nature is doing.

"You have these news events where people are taken to Glacier National Park or to Alaska, and they are shown a glacier that has been retreating," says Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The assumption is it's global warming.

"But then you look at the markers and you see that the retreat began around 1820. That's not due to global warming, at least not from man."

In other words, these things happen.

"There's been a history of Earth being warm and then it gets cold," a savvy New Yorker says. "We're in a warm spot right now."

Some skeptics say the scientific models used to predict the climate do not and cannot deal with the planet's complex ecosystem.

'I think in the end ... it's really unknowable'

"The atmosphere is very complex, too complex to be in a global model and then have integrated seasons years and centuries into the future," according to Professor Bill Gray at Colorado State University. "It's just too complex to be done. If it could be done, the global modelers would be predicting a season and changes a year in the future, which they're not able to do."

There are scientists who think that the conventional wisdom is a sincere effort to do the impossible: Assume a range of possibilities and reach a consensus prediction on the climate 20, 50 even 100 years from now.

"If you take the high assumptions each time, you have something very frightening," notes Professor Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University. "If you take the low guesses each time, you have a non-problem.

"I think in the end it's not just unknown, it's really unknowable."

Skeptics agree that the globe is warming. Their questions revolve around specific elements within that general agreement. How much will it warm up? What will happen? How much are humans responsible? And what can and should government do about it?

In the end, skepticism is a matter of degrees.

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